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HomeMy WebLinkAboutJ.W. Currie, Brazos Valley Heroes One in a series of tributes to members of "Tile Greatest I Generation" wl10 served our country during world War II ~ ,,,,-c,,." First of Two Parts By Bill Yaungkin . Special to The Eagle As a young man, working on his parents' farm in ttle Durango community near Lott, J.W. W Jack~ Currie would watch the planes that flew over, vowing that one day he would fly one. And fly he did. 'i "After I graduated from Lott School in 1939, I joined the Army Air Corps so I could be near the action. I was sent to air mechanics' school and eventually became an instructor. When the war broke out, the Air Corps was asking for volunteers for the aviation cadet program. I took the test on Halloween day 1943, not expecting to pass, and got the highest grade. It wasn't long before I was flying like I had dreamed of doing. ~I did all my training at bases In Texas. to include my last training at Rattlesnake Bomber Base that is on the way to EI Paso. It was in the middle of nowhere. Upon graduation, I was assigned to a B-17 Flying Fortress crew as a second lieutenant co-pilot. We had about three weeks training together, then we received orders to pick up a new B-17 and to head to England. "In January 1944 we departed from North Dakota1n poor weather conditions. In those days, no recently trained pilot had an instrument card. We were told to stay 500 feet above the . weather. Before we could get to Maine we were at 30,000 feet with the temperature below zero degrees centigrade. We weren't dressed for this, and the whole crew got some form of frostbite before landing. Of the 40 planes that departed with us, only three made it to Maine on time. "The ne.xt day we headed to Goose Bay, Labrador, eventually on to Iceland and then England. The trip would mostly be over water and our navigator had never been over water and was so worried I thought he was going to have a heart attack. We made it to Goose Bay using our radio beacon indicator. At 11 p.m. that night, after a few winks of sleep, we headed to Iceland. We were.in clouds almost the whole way. For seven hours we couldn't locate anYthing. Two hours before we were supposed to hit Iceland, we cleared the clouds and the radio beacon came on, pointing straight ahead. "In Iceland, the weather caught us. The snow covered our plane and the runways for three days. We finally were able to uncover our plane and with 500 gallons of fuel, which is' all they allotted us, we headed to England. When we finally got to England, we were about out of fuel but were told that we had planes stacked below and couldn't land. We saw some green through the. clouds and headed down. We got to 1 ,000 feet and headed to the base and they let us land. We landed without any hydraulics and almost no fuel. Several of the planes leaving Iceland with us never made it. They were lost at sea and never heard from again. When we got out of our plane, they took it away from us and we were assigned an old B-17 painted solid black." That black B-17 meant Currie and his crew were to be part of the Eighth Air Force's Secret Squadrons. One squadron of B-24's would land behind German lines and pick up downed pilots and crew or others that needed to be taken out. The other one dropped "chaff" to disrupt German radar. Currie and his crew were night flyers who dropped information and propaganda all over Europe behind the German lines. Currie would fly 50 night missions. He described one such mission. "We had made a run to Norway and two drops over Denmark and were headed out over the North Sea when we were Jumped by two German JU-88's. They had radar and were a combination fighter-bomber plane. They came at us . from below, catching us by surprise. The first shots were like hearing hail on a tin roof. Three bullets hit the back of my seat, which waS reinforced by steel plate. One went between my legs and hit the steering column and one passed by my leg, knocking a hole in the plane. Our crew, though badly hurt, managed to shoot the second German plane down and the first one never returned to finish us off. "Our ball turret guy had been hit three times and couldn't get out and back into the plane. The tail gunner had been hit twice and the radio man had been hit one time. One 'of the waist gunners had been killed and the other waist gunner would die while we were trying to get back to England. The number two engine was knocked out. It held our navigation equipment. Without it, we only had a small compass similar to what you would find in cars today that we had never checked to see if it worked properly. About then our number four engine went out and we started dropping fast. ~ The conclusion of Jack Currie's story will be in next week's paper. Jack CUrrie's name can be found on the Brazos Valley Veterans Memorial., For more information, to make a '~ contribution, or if you know a World War II Veteran whose sfory needs to be told, contact the BWM at www.veteransmemoriaJ. org or Bill Youngkin at (979) 260-7030. ~ The E~le One in a series of tributes to me01 ers 0 "The Greatest Generation" who served our country dllring World War II Second of two parts By Bill Youngkin , Special to The Eagle When Jack Currie and crew reached England, their new B -17 went to another crew and they were assigned an old B-17 painted black. They were now part of the Secret Squadrons of the Eighth Air Force, which answered to General Eisenhower's headquarters. Currie flew 50 missions at night behind enemy lines. Last week's article ended with the account of one mission where they were attacked by two German planes. Three of the crew were wounded severely, one was killed and one would die later as they tried to get back to England. . "The attack knocked out the number two engine as well as our navigati&n equipment, leaving us with only a liquid compass, like you see in cars today. They also knocked out our oxygen supply' and we were flying at 30,000 feet. At that altitude you will lose consciousness without oxygen, so we had to descend. 'We descended to 12,000 feet and the pilot went back to help with the wounded, leaving m~ flying the plane alone. "When we assessed the damage, in addition to the naviga- tion equipment destroyed, the vacuum pump was out, the radio had been destroyed and then the number four engine went out. We were now flying on engines one and three. We kept'losing altitude and we were flying at 100 mph, right at the stall speed for a B-17. "They couldn't get the wounded ball turret guy out of the ball turret but finally managed to roll it enough so they could pull him out. We were losing altitude rapidly and I hollered for the remaining crew to throw out anything and everything we could. They threw out flak suits, guns' and radio equipment - it didn't work anyway. Finally at about 3,500 feet the plane began to hold altitude. "There we were, at night, in a badly damaged, plane, flying just above stall speed with no radio and no navigation. We headed west using the liquid compass, hopeful that we could reach England. The radio man tapped out an SOS signal on the short- . wave set, but we had no way to know if it was working or if they got our message. We flew. and we flew. I told the navigator that even at our speed, we should have reached England by now. "The navigator checked the G box 'Which was located in the nose of the plane and he told me, "If this thing is working, we need to make a 90-degree turn now." I said, "OK" and the minute we turned, we were hit with a search light pointing us in the way they wanted us to go. When radio communication was defective, this was how they could direct you to a landing .site. "The search lights directed us to a fighter base in Scotland. . - It had a metal PSP runway and' when we landed, the ball turret guns were pointed straight down and made a horrible racket when they contacted the metal runway. We only traveled about 50 yards before coming to a complete stop. We were met by an ambulance that took the dead and wounded off. When we got out of the plane, we found that the tail wheel had also been shot off and that had added to the racket we made landing. "The next morning we went out to the plane. There were .50-caliber holes all through the plane, the motors and through the propellers, even on the engines that functioned. It was so badly damaged that they pushed it to the end of the runway and then pushed it over the cliff into the sea below. "At our debriefing we were told we were being tracked on radar and if we hadn't turned when we did, we would have gone on out into the Atlantic, never to be heard from again. They gave us five new crew members and sent us back on other missions. "Our squadron lost several planes and a lot of crewmen. We flew in the worst weather you could just about imagine. Some flights were so important, according to the Eighth Air Force Composite Command, that when we took off we were told if we could not find a place to land when we got back, to set the plane on auto-pilot, head for the. open ,ocean and to bail out, Fortunately for us we always found a place to land, but some did have to bailout. "After the Battle of the Bulge, we dropped sllrrender leaflets to the retreating German soldiers. We were told later that many German soldiers used those leaflets to surrender to Allied Forces. "On our 50th mission, we were so anxious to get back to England that we took a shortcut and were almost shot down by our own troops..After our 50th mission, I returned home and was sent to Laredo Air Field. When the war in Europe was over I received orders to B-29 school, but I had enough combat points to leave the service and I did. "Two years later when Castro started his trouble in Cuba, I was called back to active duty. I remained in the Air Force and flew missions out of Japan and Korea. My career as an Air Force pilot ended in 1962 as the command pilot for the base commander at Chanute AFB in Illinois. "I returned to MM, completed two degrees in Science and Education, taught school in Bryan and then served for 17 years as ~he Surplus Procurement Officer at Texas MM, where I retired. I loved the Air Force and I loved to fly, but I gave it up when I came back to MM. But I still think about flying often." Jack Currie's name can be found on the Brazos Val/ey Veterans Memorial. For more information, to make a contribution,. or if you know a World War 1/ Veteran whose story needs to be told. contact the BWM at www.veteransmemofial.org or Bill Youngkin at (979) 260-7030. ., \.' ,.~.~ -' ~~~v,~~. .~..u~'..."...~